A major long-standing complaint is over-classification. Documents not of major security interest can still be classified, by over zealous folks, and embarrassing stuff can be classified to hide it. So, what did Trump take, and is there any evidence he monetized it by trading with a foreign or domestic individual, group, or government?
Is this making a very costly mountain out of a molehill?
With the recent news circulating about Unidentified Arial Phenomena, might the documents relate to that, with news leaking out now to prepare press and public for content to become disclosed in the course of litigation?
Otherwise, were documents of true security importance held out, or just plain stuff?
The question is of major importance. If a former President can be threatened with the remainder of his life in jail and a bar to future office, over chickenshit, then the system is quite wrong and needs to be rationally fixed. And a ton of money has been pissed away, as with THE RUSSIAN INQUIRY. As a nation, we should not be pissing money away. It is not fair to taxpaying folks to see that happen.
Consider a possible scenario: a whistleblower appears at a propitious time, seeming credible enough to be taken seriously and not dismissed as tin-foil hat stuff, saying there has been or may have been consistent truth suppression and decades of intentional disinformation about recovery of intact and partial wreckage of vehicles of a sophistication beyond current human earth-bound technology, quickly gathered up by our government and squirreled away at military installations while the public has been told "weather balloons" and some government and private labs (defense contractor friendlies?) have been trying to reverse engineer the stuff; then questions arise such as, are we being fed lies for any good reason at all, and the related question, if new tech breakthroughs are possible via such a channel, is the government playing favorites where friends of Pentagon and intelligence minions get first dibs at the massive profit potential of such findings?
Did Trump squirrel away proof of any such favoritism on the public dollar, as "insurance" of not being harassed, but ended up harassed any way? Or might he have had a higher motive, to quell new-tech favoritism for the greatest worldwide good of people everywhere?
Spin out the range of possibilities, including new keen tech to surveil and control a populace being secreted away to some having an interest in 1984 New World Order.
It could happen. People in power are not above such misuse of science.
The point is that such possibilities are all part of a hypothetical, a hypothesis provable as true or false by evidence, while being clearly concerning. It is a demonstration of why the people of our U.S. of A deserve to know WHAT THE FUCK WAS IN THOSE SUPPOSED IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS?
This hypothetical is but one possible angle of why wrongful "SECRET" classification can happen, for very, very wrong reasons, and why the severe penalties under the espionage act need attention and public debate. Snowden is staying put because of such a threat. Some normal defenses might not be available to Snowden but should be, under the espionage act, if duly debated and possibly amended.
There are questions where public sovereignty needs respect. "We the People" is not a mere catch-phrase. We lose sovereign status where government wand waving "SECRET" designations might be simply wrong and ill-motivated, and a threat is posed to proper functioning of a democratic government and nation.
BOTTOM LINE: Independent of who Trump is and how half a nation believes him a buffoon, what is the right thing for our nation to be doing, and is our nation, in fact and at law, currently doing the right thing? That is the baby not to be drowned in the bath water.
Officials and media together saying, "Trust me" just doesn't cut it. Ginning up, "take sides and bloviate" as a guide to politicians and media cuts against sound government, yet it surely appears that "take sides and bloviate" is the stuff put on our plates. Why? You tell me.
____________UPDATE____________
Coverage of aspects included in or related to the indictment worth reader attention, EmptyWheel, here and here, and LawFare, here and here.
This update will focus on the last listed (second LawFare) item, titled, "What are the Classified Documents in the Trump Indictment?"
Excerpting its list of the indictment's terse description of 31 items:
[TS//NF//SPECIAL HANDLING] Document dated May 3, 2018, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries
[TS//SI//NF//SPECIAL HANDLING] Document dated May 9, 2018, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries.
[TS//SI//NF//FISA] Undated document concerning military capabilities of a foreign country and the United States, with handwritten annotation in black marker
[TS//SPECIAL HANDLING] Document dated May 6, 2019, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to foreign countries, including military activities and planning of foreign countries.
[TS//XX/XX//ORCON//NF] Document dated June 2020, concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign country
[TS//SPECIAL HANDLING] Document dated June 4, 2020, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries
[S//NF] Document dated October 21, 2018, concerning communications with a leader of a foreign country.
[S//REL FVEY]Document dated October 4, 2019, concerning military capabilities of a foreign country.
[TS//XX/X//ORCON/NF/FISA] Undated document concerning military attacks by a foreign country
[TS//TK//NF] Document dated November 2017, concerning military capabilities of a foreign country
[S//REL FVEY]Undated document concerning military contingency planning of the United States
[S//REL FVEY] Paged of undated document concerning projected regional military capabilities of a foreign country and the United States
[TS//SI/TK//NF] Undated document concerning military capabilities of a foreign country and the United States
[S//ORCON/NF] Document dated January 2020, concerning military options of a foreign country and potential effects on United States interests
[S//ORCON/NF] Document dated February 2020 concerning policies in a foreign country
[S//ORCON//NF] Document dated December 2019, concerning foreign country support of terrorist acts against United States interests
[TS//X/TK/ORCON/IMCON/NF] Document dated January 2020 concerning military capabilities of a foreign country
[S//NF] Document dated March 2020 concerning military operations against United States forces and others
[S/FRD] Undated document concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States
[[TS//XX/ORCON//NF] Undated document concerning timeline and details of attack in a foreign country
[S//NF] Undated document concerning military capabilities of foreign countries
[TS//X/RSEN/ORCON//NF] Document dated August 2019, concerning military activity of a foreign country
[TS//SPECIAL HANDLING] Document dated August 30, 2019, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries, with handwritten annotation in black marker
[[TS//HCS-P/SI//ORCON-USGOV/NF] Undated document concerning military activity of a foreign country
[[TS//HCS-P/SI//ORCON-USGOV/NF] Document dated October 24, 2019, concerning military activity of foreign countries and the United States
[[TS//X//ORCON//NF/FISA] Document dated November 7, 2019, concerning military activity of foreign countries and the United States
[TS//SI/TK//NF] Document dated November 2019, concerning military activity of foreign countries
[TS//SPECIAL HANDLING] Document dated October 18, 2019, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries
[TS//X/SI/TK//ORCON/NF]Document dated October 18, 2019, concerning military capabilities of a foreign country
[TS//X/ORCON/NF/FISA] Document dated October 15, 2019, concerning military activity in a foreign country
[TS//SI/TK//NF] Document dated February 2017, concerning military activity of a foreign country
The LawFare adds a key to classification coding:
Classification guide/Key:
TS: TOP SECRET
S: SECRET
NF: NOFORN - for distribution within the United States only, and not to foreign governments
REL FVEY - information relating to and shared with FIVE EYES partners; namely the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
TK - TALENT KEYHOLE, a compartment that merged from TALENT (imagery product from sensitive manned overflight) and KEYHOLE (imagery from satellite). The combined compartment covers overhead imagery. The existence of the compartment is now unclassified.
SI — Special Intelligence; generally collected signals intelligence and communications intelligence.
FISA — Information relating to, or collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and which carries additional handling sensitivity because of it.
ORCON — Originator Controlled - a handling caveat specifying that the originator (or originating agency) must be consulted prior to further sharing and/or release of the document.
HCS-P — HUMINT (Human-source derived intelligence) Control System (Product). Used to mark analysis and intelligence reporting whose ultimate information providence includes covert human sources.
X — used here to denote a compartment that is redacted in the document.
FRD — Formerly Restricted Data. A classification category for nuclear secrets under the Atomic Energy Act. See Document #19 section below.
This excerpting, which could as well have been posted from the indictment itself, but with excerpting from a pdf to plain text being harder, this listing is helpful.
Readers should recall that in the hypothetical space-vehicle recovery obfuscation it is alleged that other nations are involved in recovery and reverse engineering effort.
That means with the sparse descriptions several documents listed could be of the "We are not alone" nature. Thus NOT negating the hypothetical.
What Crabgrass finds astounding, at least so far, no outlet seems to say this situation is a great opportunity to examine the over-classification phenomenon, i.e., seeing how weighty or trivial some of these secret items are, and how some might be of a kind where the people SHOULD know, but classification motives cover up the people knowing.
It may not boggle the minds of others, but a jury will be tasked to judge Trump, being a former president with a large following, based upon documents somebody for some reason classified, with how serious Trump actual conduct was hinging upon what in fact was squirreled away wherever. Severity of Trump conduct should be a thing weighed by a jury, yet, based on indictment "detail," how can they.
Trust us: This is what the indictment asks. Trusting the government too much can in some instances be viewed as a dereliction of citizen duty. If tightly scrutinized by citizens, the government can get away with a lesser degree of misbehavior than if blandly classifying this and that to avoid people discovering misdeeds or dumb judgments; both of which are worries with unbridled state powers.
Disclose at least a sampling of the documents, even if a handful are of such national security import that disclosing them would imperil our safety. That handful, remove from the list, since enough others exist to put Trump in the slammer until he dies, as a practical fact. Plus obstruction is independent of what any documents say, it relates to conduct aimed at frustrating the people learning truth, apart from what documents actually say. Such conduct is offensive as well as illegal. A president should not do it. And if proven in court to have done it, that apart from any particular document is crime.
Why other outlets are declining to view as newsworthy over-classification as a dimension of government conduct that a Trump trial could help disclose to them and us is a mystery. Perhaps as time passes toward a trial outlets wanting to be viewed as trustworthy might move toward publishing such thinking, pro or con.
____________FURTHER UPDATE___________
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| Mar a Lago biff |
A chandelier in a biff? Pretentiousness is as it does.